A sneak peek of what life after college looks like for a working, single, pakistani muslim-american girl

October 7, 2016October 14, 2016

Economic Travel to Chicago-Pizzeria Uno

Now lets jump right into the more exciting stuff. A few days before we came to Chicago, I had some help from my friend, Kiran Salman, who happens to be an avid traveler. Known for her sharp mind, great looks, and her skills in basketball, Kiran has traveled almost all corners of the world and also has great tips and tricks for those traveling alone. Not only has she seen many parts of the world that many of us would die to see, during her travels she’s also picked up on the local languages and speaks a total of three languages other than English. In my eyes, Ms. Salman is an all-star.

Kiran had already prepared a well versed list of places to see when she came to Chicago last winter. Thankfully for us, Chicago was a kind hostess and welcomed us with a perfect 69F degree weather for the entire weekend. The majority of the places we visited were in downtown Chicago and required a maximum of .8 miles of walking to each destination. For someone that has lived in a college town for the past four years, .8 miles was no feat.

It’s always a good idea to map out places using Google maps to get a sense of your surroundings. On the map, it may seem like each of these places are rather far away, but once you’re in the city you get a better idea of how close each landmark actually is to one another. The first place we walked to was Pizzeria Uno. We took L blue line to Clark/Lake and walked to the restaurant from there. The lack of inclination in the geography of the city didn’t make it tiresome to walk to our destination. Rather, it was exciting and refreshing to experience the city as we walked over bridges and had a chance to admire the city’s architecture.

Pizzeria Uno – Cooking with the Chef: How to make deep dish pizza

One of the more “expensive” things I spent my money on was treating my mom out Saturday morning to a deep dish pizza cooking class with the chef of a famous pizza place called Pizzeria Uno. I came across these private sessions on groupon (my official best friend) before we left and decided to start our adventures off with some classic Chicago pizza. I believe for two people it cost me $60 for a three hour class. We arrived a little late so they didn’t check any paperwork or receipts, we simply came in and sat down. Come to think of it, I could have definitely taken the class for free and no one would have asked. Doing that, however, would have gone against Islamic teachings so I decided to do our Chicago trip the “halal way”.

Pizza for brunch was definitely a great idea. The chef didn’t hold back any information about how to make this delicious pizza. I left confident enough to make the pizza on my own. He talked about some amazing tips and tricks and that would be helpful for an experienced cook. From what I could read from my mom’s face, she really enjoyed the class as well. Since we had made our own pies, this covered our hunger needs later in the day. It was a little annoying to carry around our to-go mini box of pizza but I realized that next time I travel anywhere I’m gonna be sure to take a backpack with me instead of my purse.

After the class as we were on our way to the Navy Pier, the winds started to blow a little more aggressively and my mom started to get cold. To make sure she stayed comfortable throughout the trip, I realized that there wouldn’t be any harm in stopping by and buying a jacket from Target and returning it later. We spent a good hour hanging around Target for multiple reasons – perhaps a blog about our funny moments another time. As soon as we left Target the sun was up and it was no longer windy. It was only 5 minutes in when we decided to take the jackets off that we had just bought. It seemed that we’d spent all the cold and windy hour inside Target only to walk back outside to a sunny Chicago.

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